Abstract
Although in recent years Africans have, through their very rich indigenous performing traditions, began once again to re-affirm the functionality of their arts, yet not many people today have tried to relate these to questions of mass mobilization and conscientization. It is believed that African art and particularly traditional African theatre, story-telling or art serve a social function with several pieces of African literature, such as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958) receiving significant worldwide critical acclaim for their analysis on the effect of colonialism on African cultures. This study is a critical examination of Femi Abodunrin’s The Dancing Masquerade. From the colonial and postcolonial perspectives, the study investigates a peoples’ shared pain of perceived decline in culture. It scrutinises the uniqueness and relevance of African cultures as they interface with European and Western cultures in the present era of globalization “so that we are able to understand each other not simply as different but as bearers of a common humanity”. Invariably, the study examines some adjustments which African cultures have had to make, or ought to make, as they come in contact with other cultures. It is assumed that through such an endeavour, the twenty-first century can find its freedom of choice and association. q Key words: Africa, The Dancing Masquerade, shared pain, culture, globalization, mobilization.
Highlights
Literature‟s foremost objective is to impact the reader or listener
Even if at the risk of being regarded as repetitive of postcolonial themes by African writers, the on-going misrepresentation of and bias against African cultures makes it important that we examine the peculiarity of Abodunrin‟s thoughts in The Dancing Masquerade concerning on-going postcolonial debate by African literati
Aside raising awareness of the rediscovery of the „submerged‟ cultures of the people of Baluba, Abodunrin stirs in his reader the pertinence of discovering the functions and usefulness of art in the twenty-first century
Summary
It is believed that African art and traditional African theatre, story-telling or art serve a social function with several pieces of African literature, such as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958) receiving significant worldwide critical acclaim for their analysis on the effect of colonialism on African cultures. From the colonial and postcolonial perspectives, the study investigates a peoples‟ shared pain of perceived decline in culture. It scrutinises the uniqueness and relevance of African cultures as they interface with European and Western cultures in the present era of globalization “so that we are able to understand each other not as different but as bearers of a common humanity”.
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